National Council for Payments agrees on plan

CAIRO – 4 June 2017: The National Council for Payments agreed on the major steps needed to transform Egypt into non cash-based society over the coming years, head of the Federation of Egyptian Banks Hisham Ezz El Arab said Sunday.

Talking about the first meeting of the council, which took place Saturday, Ezz El Arab said among the challenges they will face is reducing paper-based banking transactions and transforming these to electronic archiving.

The Saturday meeting was headed by President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and attended by Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) Tarek Amer and the Ministers of Defence, Planning, Finance, Interior, Communication and Justice.

The main targets of the council are to reduce using banknotes outside of the banking system, promote using electronic channels in payments, achieve financial inclusion, increase tax collections and bring the parallel economy into the official one, CBE’s governor said during the meeting.

Egypt is promoting financial inclusion, as 10 percent of Egyptians have bank accounts. The Arab Week for Financial Inclusion was launched by the CBE from April 27-4 May, aiming to encompass a larger number of individuals in the banking sector.

The initiative aimed to allow all segments of society to have suitable opportunities to manage their finances and safely guarantee that citizens will not resort to unofficial means that are not subject to any form of supervision, which may expose citizens to fraud or excess fees.